


Anytime (For You)

by SamJoinedtheReconCorps



Series: Water and Fire (and Steam) [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Flirting, M/M, fjord is flirting now, helping with injuries, minor hurt/comfort, or well, post ep 23, so that's a step in the right direction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 17:31:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20998658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamJoinedtheReconCorps/pseuds/SamJoinedtheReconCorps
Summary: Fjord goes down in the troll fight in the swamp, and he's taking care of those injuries during their short rest, with a little help.orWhat I imagine would go through Caleb's mind when Fjord went down, and then what Fjord must have been thinking when Caleb blanked out again





	Anytime (For You)

**Author's Note:**

> okay gang, i came back right quick because this was gonna be on the last fic i wrote, but then i was like nah i think this works better as its own thing
> 
> I worked real hard and pumped this out pretty quickly because like damn I really had something to say here huh
> 
> I really hope you guys like it! It's 1:15 am and I'm super tired! but I love this ship so much!

It felt good to see his  _ Witch’s Bolt _ hit it's mark. When the troll howled in pain and anger, Fjord had had a good feeling about where the fight was going. They’d already blown up it's shack, catching it unawares, and now they outnumbered it - and they knew to stay out of direct contact with it. Fjord was confident in their odds.

The troll whipped around, immediately finding Fjord. It's chest heaved as it's eyes narrowed, and then it charged.

And suddenly Fjord was right in contact with it.

Molly got two swings in on it as it barrels past him, opening a gash in the troll’s side and almost severing it's arm. Brackish gore splatters across Molly’s face, causing him to take a quick step back as he spits it out, cursing in Infernal under his breath.

As it bears down on Fjord, he watches as the skin and sinew begin to knit it's arm back together, as if Molly hadn’t almost cut it off.

_ We weren’t doing fire damage _ , Fjord realizes, and then that thought is pushed out of his head as he shouts in pain as the troll bites down on his shoulder, it's tusks burying themselves in his chest. It racks it's claws down the front of his armor, and he barely manages to deflect one swipe before the other catches between some of the leather plates, and he can feel the skin tearing, blood pouring out.

The troll pulls back it's arms for more, digging his tusks further into Fjord to make sure he doesn’t run, but then it  _ slow _ s, it's swipe slowing down in midair as if the air itself were resisting the movement.

_ As if it were moving through molasses _ , Fjord recognizes.

“You boys have got this? Good,” Caleb calls out from somewhere behind him.

(Of course, Caleb.)

A sudden spray of poison catches Fjord in the face as a crossbow bolt protrudes through the troll’s shoulder.

“My eyes,” Fjord grimaces, the poison burning his skin. “My eyes!”

“I forgot about that,” Nott weakly admits.

He can almost imagine how apologetic she looks. He steels himself, and, through gritted teeth, Fjord shouts out, “Let it stop you not, my friend. Nott?” He calls out when he doesn’t get an answer. “Nott!”

“Wait, do let it stop me, or don’t?” she asks, voice shrill in her nervousness.

Fjord braces his hands against the troll’s tusks. “No, keep hitting it!” He takes a deep breath, about to shove the troll away. “Hit it again -!” he yells, and there’s another crossbow bolt, this time in it's chest, and the poison flies into his mouth.

It burns on his tongue, and he can feel blood rising up the back of his throat as darkness swims around the edge of his vision. His muscles begin to grow limp, the beckoning of the dark almost too much to bear.

But he hears everyone shouting out his name, yelling and screaming, and he just can’t. His friends need him.

Just as he was beginning to fall back, Fjord roars in anger, in defiance in the face of the troll, leaning into it, holding fast onto its tusks and moving again to try and shove them out of his chest.

“Fjord, run!” Beau shouts at him.

Breathing heavily, Fjord growls, “Just hit it!”

Molly rushes forward, waist deep in swamp water, and grips the scimitar tight as he stabs it in the back. Fjord can barely see Molly, catching a flash of purple before Summer’s Dance erupts from the troll’s chest - splashing more poison on Fjord.

This time when darkness beckons, Fjord can’t fight falling back into its arms.

* * *

Caleb watches as the troll falls to the ground, Fjord going down with it.

And Fjord isn’t moving.

Molly stands over the two of them, holding his hand up in a closed fist around the hilt of his sword. The eye of the snake tattoo on the back of his hand bursts, leaving a stream of blood running down his arm as something dark and viscus is drawn from Fjord’s body, hovering above him, before Molly flicks his hand, sending the blob flying over into the swamp with a small sploosh. He glances over at Caleb, giving him a small nod.

Caleb begins to wade through the swamp, heading towards Fjord, as Jester walks up to him, tapping his head a few times. “Wake up already,” she whines.

The soft glow that Caleb has grown so familiar with seeps out of Jester’s hand and into Fjord as he blearily blinks his eyes open. “Thanks, Jester,” he coughs out.

“Kiri, come out,” Jester says loudly, standing near Fjord in case he needs some support when he gets up.

Now that the immediate danger seems to be over, Nott and Beau begin to drift toward the remains of the shack, looking for the gold that they had paid Febron before he’d died from the troll’s poison. Molly’s watching the troll, tail flicking back and forth with nervous energy.

“Don’t poke it,” Molly tells Kiri as soon as she begins to make her way towards Jester.

Jester also gives her a stern look, wagging her finger at her. “Don’t stab the corpse this time, it’s poisonous.”

“ _ It’s poisonous _ ,” Kiri repeats, the perfect imitation of Jester. The dagger Fjord had given her was clutched tightly in her feathered hand.

“Good,” Jester nods, satisfied that she got the message.

Molly glanced back at the troll, just as Nott begins screaming as the troll pulls itself to its feet once more. It glowers down at Fjord, who is still barely sitting up, and swings.

The claws rake across Fjord’s shoulder and neck, reopening his wounds. He falls back, unconscious once more. It rears back to strike again, and Caleb knows that another hit will mean death for Fjord.

( _ Not Fjord _ .)

Caleb lifts his hands, focusing all his power on his  _ Slow  _ spell that was still active on the troll. It's arm loses momentum, giving them the briefest window of time.

“Should I burn this thing now?” Caleb shouts, readying his glove to fire.

“Wait one second!” Molly yells out just as Jester screams, “Wait until I can pull him away!”

( _ And that makes Caleb more sure of this course of action, knowing that they’re thinking what he’s thinking. _ )

“Alright, I’ll hold on a moment!” he responds, concentrating on keeping the troll  _ slow _ ed.

“Hold until we’re clear!” Molly says, whipping around the troll.

( _ Caleb watches Fjord’s unconscious body. The glove begins to heat with the spell, but he’s only going to fire once Fjord is out of the way. He can’t risk hurting Fjord. _ )

“Okay - ahhh!” Nott shrieks, clearly torn. “I want to so bad!”

Molly catches the troll’s attention, waving his sword in a flourish before using Summer’s Dance’s magic and  _ Misty Step _ ping away and appearing beside Nott near the shack.

Beau rushes forward while the troll is distracted, ducking beneath it's arm and grabbing onto Fjord, turning to Yasha and shouting, “Help me!”

Yasha splashes through the water, grabbing Fjord from the other side and the two of them drag him out and away.

The troll roars in anger, sounding distorted from the  _ slow _ as it's arm is still slowly making it's way to where Fjord had been. Caleb doesn’t even give him a chance to look over to where Fjord had been dragged off to.

He catches sight of a crossbow bolt spearing through the troll’s neck as he unleashes the glove’s  _ Scorching Ray _ , the three balls of fire flying out and engulfing the troll in flames.

There’s a moment where he tries to be funny, tries to be witty, but it's just not his forte and all he ends up saying is “There is - I am with these people!” which is accurate and may have ended up being funny just on account of how ridiculous it sounded, and the troll is on fire, it's head bursting like a cantaloupe in the flames -

_ “Help! Help! Somebody please help us!” _

Caleb falls to his knees, his arms limp at his sides as he watches the troll burn.

_ “Leofric, the door - the door won’t open!” _

_ “Una! Una!” _

_ “Someone please! Help!” _

He can’t tear his eyes away from the flames.

* * *

“Stop doing this,” Jester frowns, patting him on the head.

Fjord groans, looking up at her annoyed expression. “I feel like this is a rough day.” He sits up in the swamp water, leaning back against a nearby tree, the lingering effects of Jester’s magic working to close his wounds over.

Grimacing, Fjord lets out a sigh as he glances around at the rest of the group. They all look better for wear and tear, but he has to double check since he didn’t see Caleb, so he sits up, looking for that bright head of hair.

His heart squeezes in his chest when he sees him, face completely blank, kneeling in front of the flames. Caleb killed the troll with his fire. He can only imagine what Caleb is reliving as he stares into the blaze.

He tries to stand, intending to get to Caleb and get him away from the fire, but his chest constricts and his muscles spasm in pain. Wincing, he braces himself against the tree, watching as Beau makes her way over to Caleb, putting an uncharacteristically gentle hand on his arm.

“Let’s take a walk,” she says, pulling him away.

Caleb doesn’t fight her guiding hand, getting up without a word and slowly walking away.

Fjord lets himself slide back into a sitting position. After Beau’s apology, he knows that she’ll be good with him.

It’s also comforting to see Nott give Beau a nod before walking towards the remains of the shack.

“Let’s not crowd the boy,” Molly says to Nott, but when Fjord glances over he sees that Molly’s looking at him, giving him a knowing look.

With a sigh, Fjord begrudgingly rests his head against the tree, closing his eyes. He can hear Jester and Nott at the troll, something about wrapping up the heart Jester had carved out of it. He’s not really all that tuned into what they’re doing if he’s being completely honest with himself.

He opens his eyes every few seconds or so, catching sight of Caleb and Beau as they walk. It’s maybe five minutes later when he finally sees Caleb come to, when he sees emotion on his face where it had been blank since the fight ended.

Beau says something to him, holding out her waterskins. Caleb grabs one and begins drinking and Beau grabs the other, unwrapping one of her sashes from around her waist and getting it a little wet before dabbing it on Caleb’s forehead.

Fjord finally drags himself to stand, limping towards Caleb and Beau. “Y’all mind if we take like a,” he winces, coughing out, “short rest or something?”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Beau agrees. “There’s a campfire over there that Yasha and I made with the oil and the torch that we threw. It’s already done - let’s go sit by that,” and she gestures at the burning pile of skulls near the shack, the remainder of a good idea that had fallen victim to shitty execution.

“Sit by the skulls!” Jester calls out from where she’s wrapping the troll heart in it's loincloth. “It’s cozy over here.”

They make their way to the fire, joining the others, and they sit for a while, catching their breath. Nott passes out the meager bits of gold they managed to find in the wreckage of the shack, and Jester and Molly try to dissuade Kiri from stabbing the troll’s corpse, but when it doesn’t splurt poison they decide to just let her get it out of her system.

Fjord gently removes his armor, grimacing and biting back curses all the while. It hurts like a bitch, but he manages to peel it away, getting bandages from Jester and starting to wrap up and bind the wounds on his shoulder and chest. While Jester’s healing got the worst of the bleeding to stop, he didn’t want to waste any more of her spells to finish closing them up all the way - so good old fashioned wrappings were the way to go.

It was easier to take off his shirt than his armor since it basically came apart in tatters as soon as his armor was off. Beau handed him her waterskin.

“You should clean those out a bit,” she said.

He nodded, “Thanks.” He tore off a relatively clean strip from his shirt, dribbling water on it and slowly cleaning around the wounds. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything about the pain.

As soon as he was sure that his shoulder and chest were as clean as they would get in the swamp, he began to unravel to bandages, slowly wrapping them around his chest - or trying to. After having unwrapped and rewrapped for the second time, when he began to wrap it again he felt another pair of hands come around and take a hold of the bandage as he tried to get it around his back.

“Here, let me,” Caleb offered quietly.

Fjord dropped his arm, glancing at him over his shoulder and giving him a nod. “Thanks, Caleb.”

“Anytime,” Caleb answered, his touch soft and gentle as he reached around, almost hugging Fjord from behind as he passed the bandage around Fjord’s chest.

Caleb passed the bandage around a few times, getting a few wraps around his shoulder to make sure it was sturdy around the wound. It was slow going, but Fjord didn’t mind. If anything, it was lulling him to sleep, feeling Caleb’s warm hands against his skin.

He had just begun to nod off, unconsciously leaning back into Caleb, when he heard Nott say, “Kiri, would you like some human jerky?”

“No, no - don’t!” both Jester and Fjord exclaim, Jester with a quick swipe to snatch the jerky away from Nott’s outstretched hand as Kiri was reaching for it and Fjord lurching forward to stop her as well.

“What? I thought birds might like that,” Nott told Jester, and they devolved into a quick life lesson on not eating human - unless under desperate measures.

“Ah - ah fuck,” Fjord groaned, feeling the sharp movement in his shoulder.

Caleb put his hands on his back, steadying him. “Take it easy, Fjord,” he scolded, no bite in his tone, just that same fondness he’d been using more and more often with him.

Fjord leaned into the touch, emboldened by everything that had happened during the fight, and leaned back until his head was resting on Caleb’s shoulder. He turned to look up at him, seeing the beginning of an adorable blush on Caleb’s face. “When I’ve got such a nice healer to take care of me, I don’t have to worry too much about taking it easy.”

“Jester is a nice healer,” Caleb nodded, fighting down the blush.

“You know I wasn’t talking about Jester,” Fjord told him, lowering his voice. He leaned closer to Caleb, pressing into the crook of his neck. “‘Was talkin’ ‘bout you.”

The blush turned an even darker shade as Caleb turned away, too flustered to say anything. While everything inside of him wanted to surge up and kiss Caleb, he didn’t want to make him uncomfortable - especially after the obvious flashbacks he had gone through after killing the troll. He sat up a little, enough to get his head off Caleb’s shoulder but still resting his back against Caleb’s arms.

“Well, I’m glad we, uh, we did that,” Fjord said to the group at large. “Shall we, uh, continue on our way?”

“Are you okay, Fjord? You died twice,” Jester asked, looking more worried than she seemed earlier when she’s healed him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Fjord sighed, sitting up all the way now, “That didn’t go the way I planned. My strategy kinda went to shit.”

“Do you still have the crazy eye thing in your stomach?” Nott added.

“In my stomach?” Fjord repeated, a little confused as he touched his stomach.

Jester poked his stomach as well.

Realizing what they were referring to - and feeling Caleb stiffen a bit behind him - Fjord immediately quelled their worries. “I’m fine, really.” He reached back, seemingly trying to push himself up further but letting his hand brush against Caleb’s knee. “Just a little beat up from the fight, but nothing other than that.”

“Alright, I guess we’ll just keep going,” Nott shrugged, getting up.

“Yeah, we should probably do that,” Jester agreed.

“How are you, Caleb?” Nott said, turning to her best friend.

“Good, good,” he answered quickly.

Nott didn’t seem too convinced. “You went to a - you went, you were just,” she waves a hand in front of her face. “You faded away there for a second, are you okay?”

Yasha nods as well. “Yeah, what happened? You good? Okay?”

He gives them a thumbs up, and Fjord knows it's because Caleb is probably finding it hard to find his voice.

Jester looked over at Yasha. “He gets weird when he kills people when he burns them. He did it before,” she explains.

“Okay - Jester -” Fjord begins to cut in, wanting to stop whatever words that train of thought brought about as quickly as possible.

Molly shook his head from beside her too. “You don’t have to - yeah, yeah.”

“I think anyone would, really,” Nott reasons.

Jester glances over at Kiri. “I dunno - I don’t know if Kiri would. She’d probably be cool with it.”

“But Fjord is still here,” Caleb finally says, standing up from behind Fjord. He lets his fingers linger along the curve of his shoulder from where he stands. “So there is the important thing. Let’s focus on the good things in our lives.”

His words bring a lump to Fjord’s throat. “Yeah, thank you, Caleb,” he gets out. He reaches up, resting his hand over Caleb’s. “Appreciate that.”

“You took care of the problem,” Yasha agrees.

“Yeah, I feel like those two aren’t like mutually exclusive or anything but yeah,” Beau adds.

There’s a lull in the conversation, and Fjord feels like he’s at the edge of a precipice, his hand over Caleb’s, so close to going over the edge.

Then, Jester breaks it. “Let’s start walking!” she announces as she jumps up and starts making her way in the general direction of the town.

Caleb helps Fjord to his feet, picking up his armor for him and handing it to him. Their fingers brush, and a memory of Zadash flashes in Fjord’s mind.

“Do you need help putting it back on?” Caleb asks, looking up at him.

Fjord wants to say yes, if only to keep Caleb close to him, but he can see Molly watching with a raised eyebrow, and he knows that everyone else in the group is only a step behind before they realize his feelings and who knows what hell will break loose then.

“It’ll be a bit slow, but I think I’ve got it from here,” Fjord tells him. “Thank you though,” he says, reaching up and running his thumb over the slight stubble already growing on his cheek. “For everything.”

“A-anytime,” Caleb stutters out. “Like I said, anytime.”

Fjord gives him a charming smile.

( _ Caleb feels his knees go weak _ .)

“Well there’s plenty of time left for me to cash in on that ‘anytime’,” Fjord pointed out. “But for now, how about you help us all get back to town and out of this godforsaken swamp.”

“Oh, yes - that,” Caleb nods rapidly, snapping to attention. He turns and sees the group already a couple dozen steps away from them. “Wait, Jester! That’s the wrong way,” he calls out, splashing through the swamp to get to the front of the group.

Fjord watches him go, feeling warm and happy despite how exhausted and sore he was.

(And wondering how the stubble on Caleb’s cheeks would have felt between his hands if he’d pulled him in for a kiss.)

**Author's Note:**

> Well guys, I really really hope you guys liked that! I just idk, I like helping with injuries because man idk the intimacy and care of it all just makes my heart melt! And I also love love love the idea of Fjord starting to flirt a bit more, get Caleb blushy and flustered and just uuuuughhhh they're too much. I really hope you guys liked this! I worked extra hard on it!
> 
> And to all my two fics that I've got in the works, my unfinished Avengers:Redemption series and my Grog/Reader WIP on my computer, I see you, and Imma finish you
> 
> This fic was inspired by the scenes:  
Have Bird, Will Travel | Critical Role | Campaign 2, Episode 23 - 50:52 through 1:19:39
> 
> To all the other lovely readers out there, I love you so much. All the positivity I get makes me sooooooo happy. Much, much, much love to you all my dears!!


End file.
